# Meeting on the Rosebud Sioux reservation last week, Native tribal leaders from both sides of the border and private land owners from South Dakota and Nebraska signed a ‘Mother Earth Accord’ opposing Keystone XL and the tar sands. These are the people who started this fight; and they’re being joined by everyone right down to Nebraska Cornhusker football fans who booed lustily when a Keystone ad showed up on the Jumbotron at a recent game. The next day the university ended their sponsorship deal with Trans-Canada Pipeline

We can only hope and pray that this monstrosity gets stopped. IF it is not stopped what happened on the Yellowstone River this past summer may be repeated on top of the Ogala Aquifer. The Yellowstone oil spill is teh same oil that will be pumped across the aquifer.

Actually Flip with the links above you can petition the Obama administration. I know this sounds quaint but after ignoring his political base for three years this will be, I believe, a make or break issue for him.

I picked up the following article from Rolling Stone Magazine and chose a couple of quotes from it but this is but one place I've seen this issue discussed:

The Keystone XL pipeline wraps up every kind of environmental devastation in one 1,700-mile-long disaster. At its source, in the tar sands of Alberta, the mining of this oil-rich bitumen has already destroyed vast swaths of boreal forest and native land – think mountaintop removal, but without the mountain. The biggest machines on earth scrape away the woods and dig down to the oily sand beneath – so far they've only got three percent of the oil, but they've already moved more soil than the Great Wall of China, the Suez Canal, the Aswan Dam and the Pyramid of Cheops combined. The new pipeline – the biggest hose into this reservoir – will increase the rate of extraction, and it will carry that oily sand over some of the most sensitive land on the continent, including the Ogallala aquifer, source of freshwater for the plains. A much smaller precursor pipeline spilled 14 times in the past year.

And the opponents? Native peoples opened up the fight years ago, and still lead it – they were the first to experience the damage, and they found support from some of the big green groups as the pipeline plan began to unfold. Landowners from the high plains organized along the pipeline route; they did so well in swaying public opinion that both the Republican governor and senator from Nebraska have called on Obama to block the pipe. The dramatic civil disobedience over the summer transformed the fight from a regional into a national and emotional one – 1,253 people got arrested and 612,000 signed petitions. The head of the NAACP, Ben Jealous, showed up to address the demonstrators, and the Hip Hop Caucus helped headline its closing rally. A few days later, nine Nobel Peace Prize laureates – from the Dalai Lama to Archbishop Desmond Tutu – sent a powerful appeal to the president. The New York Times and Robert Redford have also sided with the growing opposition.http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/ne ... g-20110928

We've suspected for quite a while that the State Department was biased towards approving the Keystone XL pipeline.1

But if there was any remaining doubt, it has been shattered.

Evidence is piling up that the State Department has maintained a corrupt and biased "review" process, including cozy ties between State Department officials and TransCanada lobbyists, and — incredibly — allowing a company employed by TransCanada to conduct the environmental review and public hearing processes.

The State Department is accepting final public comments on the Keystone XL pipeline until Friday. We need a flood of comments to call out their blatant bias, and send a strong message to President Obama to reject this project.

Submit a public comment to call-out the State Department's pro-pipeline bias. The Keystone XL Pipeline asks America to endure great risks in a desperate attempt to maintain our reliance on damaging fossil fuels.

But rather than conducting a thorough, good-faith review of this dangerous project, in a stunning conflict of interest, the State Department handed over the environmental review and public hearing process to a company called CARDNO Entrix, a contractor literally working for pipeline developer TransCanada!2

Cardno ENTRIX worked previously for BP to conduct the environmental review of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that exploded in the gulf last year.3

Since the Bush Administration, Cardno ENTRIX has been working on behalf of the State Department to evaluate Keystone XL. Their woefully inadequate inadequate environmental review of the project was finalized by the State Department a few weeks ago, despite the EPA raising numerous concerns and warning that the review was "insufficient."4

Their so-called "State Department hearings" were similarly biased. According to numerous reports from the more than 300 CREDO members who attended the hearings, and many other activists, the Cardno ENTRIX representatives running the public hearings consistently gave the first few hours of speaking spots to oil-industry workers who were bussed in from out-of-state, and were paid to wait in line starting early in the morning. Only when pipeline opponents began speaking, did the moderators start enforcing stricter time limits.

An 85-year-old CREDO Activist had to go home after waiting for five hours at the Lincoln, Nebraska hearing, and never had the opportunity to speak. She wrote us that "It was the poorest excuse for a hearing I've ever witnessed." According to another participant at the hearing in Austin "This was not a hearing, this was a farce."5

This bias has pervaded the entire Keystone XL process. But it's still up to President Obama, and we need to send him a strong message now on the illegitimacy of the State Department's review.

Submit a public comment to send a message to President Obama and call out the stunning conflict of interest in the Keystone XL review process. On top of all of this, numerous emails released by our friends at Friends of the Earth reveal shockingly cozy relationships between State Department officials and lobbyists for the Canadian pipeline company TransCanada.

One of the lobbyists is a man named Paul Elliot, who previously served as the Deputy Campaign Manager on Hillary Clinton's 2008 Presidential campaign. State Department officials cheered Elliot on as he convinced one Senator to endorse the pipeline project,6 and even appear to have coached Elliot and other TransCanada staff about how to build their case for approval, and even how to respond to questions and concerns about pipeline safety and environmental impact.7

The State Department has a solemn obligation to the people of this country to conduct an impartial evaluation of the impacts of this pipeline. Instead, officials appear to be acting in cahoots with the foreign company they are supposed to be evaluating.

Even if the State Department drops the ball, President Obama still has the power to lead. This final public comment period is a crucial opportunity to show that the State Department is working for TransCanada's interest, not our national interest — and send a message that this pipeline must be rejected.

Submit a public comment now to say the Keystone XL Pipeline is not in our national interest. Thanks for fighting Keystone XL.

GW, all that was done was to put off the decision until after the election of 2012. This is an international confrontation. Canada wants get that oil out and on the market no matter what the cost. Landowners have been threatened with eminent domain (how a Canadian company can exercise eminent domain in the US is somewhat of a mystery to me). To any that read this, please take a moment and watch this short video:

There is little I can do from CA but sign every damned petition, contact state and federal representatives and make as many phone calls as I can but this is way too important an issue to just let sit until after the election. I know you are in the front lines every day and I wonder how many other First Nations are having to do the same thing.

Also, please take a moment and click on the Save The Delaware and how many people, some on this forum, this affects and again I wonder how many First Nations this affects.

Just in case you thought there was anything subtle about the Keystone battle, you need to hear what the president of the American Petroleum Institute -- the oil industry's #1 front group -- said today: if the President doesn’t approve the project there will “huge political consequences.”

That’s as direct a threat as you’re ever going to hear in DC, and it shows just how mad you made the oil industry last year by exposing Keystone for the climate-killing danger it is. And the oil industry can obviously make good on their threats -- they’ve got all the money on earth, and thanks to Citizens United they can use it without restriction in our elections. They’re not used to ever losing.

So far the Obama administration is standing firm in the face of Big Oil's bullying -- the White House made it completely clear last month that if the oil industry and its harem in Congress forced a speeded-up review, it would lead to an outright rejection of the permit for the pipeline. We expect they’ll keep their word.Here's what I think we need to do.

1- Let the president know you’ve got his back when he rejects the pipeline. Tell him that addressing climate change is the key to our future, and that you’re glad he’s not bending.

2- Take the offensive against the oil industry. If they’re going to try and ram Keystone down our throats we’re going to try and take away something they hold dear, the handouts that Congress gives them each and every year. They’re the richest industry on earth, they’re doing great damage to the planet -- and they expect us to pay for it with our tax dollars.

Can you send a quick note to President Obama covering those two key points?

President Obama: Thank you for opposing the rushed Keystone XL pipeline permit. Responding to climate change is critical to preserving our collective future, and I hope this is a first step towards the dramatic changes we need to avoid catastrophe. PS: Please take handouts for the fossil fuel industry out of next year’s budget. There are people in America who need that money more.

There’s lots more to be done, of course. In the slightly longer run, we’ve got to take on the greatest subsidy of all: the special privilege that Congress gives the fossil fuel industry to use the atmosphere as an open sewer into which to dump its carbon for free.

But today -- right now, in the face of this kind of straight-up bullying -- it’s time to punch back. We’re nonviolent, but we’re not wimps.Bill

350.org is building a global grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis. Our online campaigns, grassroots organizing, and mass public actions are led from the bottom up by thousands of volunteer organizers in over 188 countries. You can join 350.org on Facebook by becoming a fan of our page at facebook.com/350org and follow us on twitter by visiting twitter.com/350. To join our list (maybe a friend forwarded you this e-mail) visit http://www.350.org/signup. To support our work, donate securely online at 350.org/donate.

What is 350? 350 is the number that leading scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Scientists measure carbon dioxide in "parts per million" (ppm), so 350ppm is the number humanity needs to get below as soon as possible to avoid runaway climate change. To get there, we need a different kind of PPM–a "people powered movement" that is made of people like you in every corner of the planet.

Sorry people there are four links here but only two videos. I can't erase them, my post was too long.

"Kelso's concerns escalated after an Enbridge pipeline spilled dilbit into Michigan's Kalamazoo River in July 2010. The Environmental Protection Agency doesn't expect the cleanup of that spill to be completed until the end of 2012."

This guy is pretty interesting because he keeps going back to the sites season after season, year after year. This is spring time after trudging through snow after trudging through leaves and devastation:

Two very short videos. The first involves the Michigan oil pipeline spill from the Enbridge pipeline carrying tar sands oil. The second shows the proposed route that the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines to British Columbia from Alberta which would cross 50 First Nations communities:

Some won't make the connection from gas fracking to oil but the energy companies frack to get oil.

I saw Josh Fox interviewed last night. This is not the first time Republicans have tried to thwart his efforts. Since the release of his film Gasland fracking is now a national conversation. Now it seems it is becoming an international conversation.

I just finished an article in the August 2011 National Geographic titled "Pipeline Through Paradise" that is about the other half of the Keystone XL pipeline. Seems it will be a doubleled barreled pipeline, one to carry oil west and another carrying condensate, a liquid to dilute the thick crude and allow it to flow, east to Alberta. I'll see if I can find the article online.

On the left is a link to their story on the Spirit Bear, that was in the same issue that was really interesting:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/ ... rcott-textEven today the Gitga'at and Kitasoo/Xai'xais people keep a watchful eye on their bears during hunting season. "It's not a good idea to come after black bear in our territory," says Robinson. "You never know. Our bears might shoot back."

There are endless stories about the after effects of fracking in my neck of the woods. These pipelines are not tiny. We were told they would be large, buried only a couple of feet deep. Guess it would be best not to plan to do any plowing over much of the country, huh?

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